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Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?

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Re: Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?

#41

Post by Xichekolas »

katz wrote: post #25
shalmanese wrote: post #13

Higher Education. Existing institutions are selling inefficient and grossly overpriced products in an environment in which objective evaluation is hard to obtain and the status quo fears innovation. If you could crack that nut, it would be massive.

There is another bigger one: College Book Industry. The current system is pretty inefficient. This probably differs from country to country. The current system here works like this: The universities give lists of subjects and prescribed textbooks to brick-and-mortar bookstores. They then buy the books and sell them at a huge mark-up. Students generally do not order online because of the time delay/import BS and many…

I used half.com all the way through college (ISBN makes it quick), but it would be much easier if the chosen textbooks were announced earlier (like you point out). Most of the time I was without a book for the first week to 10 days.

The lead time issue could be fixed simply by changing University policy, requiring professors to disclose required textbooks X weeks in advance of the first day of class.

One loophole I found near the end of undergrad was that the campus bookstore's website had the required books posted for each class well over a month ahead of time (so you could buy them online and swing by to pick them up). I just looked up all my classes there, copied down the ISBNs and hit up half.com or Amazon. Of course, this breaks down with last minute changes or additions made by professors.

Re: Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?

#42

Post by coglethorpe »

josefresco wrote: post #15
mojombo wrote: post #6

Classifieds. CraigsList is not the be-all end-all of buying/selling things locally online. It may be a tough nut to crack, but it won't be hard to radically improve upon their horrible user experience. I would love to see some competition in this space.

Not going to happen. Craigslist is at that early Google period where everyone who uses it for the first time never looks back and is uber-loyal to the brand. A slick competitor with a great interface and new tools still has to climb that huge Ebay/Facebook-style mountain (no users no stuff, no reason)

I've used Craigslist for a car sale and wasn't impressed. I ended up paying a fee to AutoTrader and sold it fairly fast.

Re: Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?

#43

Post by bemmu »

auston wrote: post #34
geuis wrote: post #22

Job search. There are a ton of competitors in this space, established and startup, but so far its all crap. I've been looking for a new job recently and I'm completely dissatisfied with everything that's out there. Craigslist is still probably the best resource for finding tech jobs, at least in San Francisco but there has to be a better way. A couple of ideas have popped into my head recently about ways to really sh…

Have you seen indeed.com?

Wow, Quantcast/Compete estimate their monthly users to be 6-9 million. Their AdSense account must be quite healthy. I wonder how they got granted access to the data from the first few sites they index.

Re: Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?

#44

Post by eli »

mojombo wrote: post #6

Classifieds. CraigsList is not the be-all end-all of buying/selling things locally online. It may be a tough nut to crack, but it won't be hard to radically improve upon their horrible user experience. I would love to see some competition in this space.

Posting a classified ad is only as useful as the number of interested parties who read it.

Your new site would have to be pretty fickin' special for me to post my ad there instead of to a massively larger audience on craigslist

Also, you can't exactly undercut them -- Craigslist is free for most categories and pretty reasonable for the others

Re: Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?

#45

Post by eli »

mixmax wrote: post #7

Look at a lot of big traditional B2B businesses. They haven't gotten much coverage because they aren't sexy and visible to the normal consumer. - ERP ssystems are impossible to understand for the people that work with them, and require an army of highly paid consultants just to get it up and running. - financial software for large companies doesn't allow managers to see numbers in real-time, is difficult to get numbe…

More than just "doesn't suck" -- you need to be able to save people money from pretty much day 1.

Re: Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?

#46

Post by pudo »

Most of the publishing industry, esp. books. This is somewhat contingent on the success of ePaper/eBook technologies like (but not) the Kindle. They still need to develop for a while (2yrs or so) so the displays will be fast, have good contrast and be able to display color.

But even before that, we might see a lot more authors going online and developing new patterns of writing that are based on shorter publishing cycles and still lower revenue expectations.

I don't know how this will play out, but I'd bet that the RIAA/audio industry would make an embarassingly good model of what this very conservative industry will go through.

Re: Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?

#48

Post by eli »

katz wrote: post #25
shalmanese wrote: post #13

Higher Education. Existing institutions are selling inefficient and grossly overpriced products in an environment in which objective evaluation is hard to obtain and the status quo fears innovation. If you could crack that nut, it would be massive.

There is another bigger one: College Book Industry. The current system is pretty inefficient. This probably differs from country to country. The current system here works like this: The universities give lists of subjects and prescribed textbooks to brick-and-mortar bookstores. They then buy the books and sell them at a huge mark-up. Students generally do not order online because of the time delay/import BS and many…

Tangentially relevant:

8 Stupid Frat Boy Business Ideas http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/8-stupid-frat-boy-...

"NO BOOK EXCHANGE HAS EVER REALLY SUCCEEDED. I HATE TO CRUSH DREAMS BUT PLEASE FORGET ABOUT THIS."

Re: Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?

#49

Post by robfitz »

visas / immigration. you're looking at $400-900 an hour for lawyers to point you to the right webpage and tell you whether or not your particular situation fits through a loophole.

corporate setup & startup paperwork of all sorts. also housing rental contracts, contractor... contracts. etc.

patent applications. it's so hard to find good examples and templates. i'd pay to have something that said "type your overview here", "upload a picture here", etc.

college applications. they charge what, $50 per application they look at? save them time, save applicants money. and how many colleges would perfectly suit you that you never heard about?

make school scholarships more transparent and ease the application process.

keeping up with relatives. i feel a little dirty about this one, but i'd love to have a helper manage my familial relationships in a behind-the-scenes fashion. birthday email templates, friendly hellos, status updates, etc. although deciding to pay for a service of that sort would mean acknowledging that you're a terrible grandson/husband/etc.

warranties & mail in rebates. they all turn straight into money and dealing with them is total bs.

i'm going back to work...

Re: Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?

#50

Post by coglethorpe »

auston wrote: post #34
geuis wrote: post #22

Job search. There are a ton of competitors in this space, established and startup, but so far its all crap. I've been looking for a new job recently and I'm completely dissatisfied with everything that's out there. Craigslist is still probably the best resource for finding tech jobs, at least in San Francisco but there has to be a better way. A couple of ideas have popped into my head recently about ways to really sh…

Have you seen indeed.com?

That's a pretty good site. I was thinking of something similar, to be honest. Seeing a competitor like that makes me pause. Their traffic numbers look good, but still fall behind sites like CareerBuilder, and, of course, Monster. I do note a recent spike in traffic numbers. Thanks, economy!

Hashjobs.com is a pretty cute rails app one guy threw together, I assume to show his Rails chops rather than as a startup. It's not mine, but was interesting enough to mention.

http://jobfeedr.com/ is another interesting one, I think I heard of it here. It's a modified WP blog...

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